446 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DARC. obedience by dwelling upon the power of her demeanor, which was at once impassioned and serene. Rude men- at-arms could not swear in her presence, and the nobles of a dissolute court yielded to the force of her resolve. They told her that her road to the king was infested with enemies. " I do not fear them," replied this peasant girl, not yet eighteen. " If there are enemies upon my road, God is there also, and He will know how to prepare my way to the Lord Dauphin. I was created and put into the world for that!" The Comte de Dunois in his old age, twenty-six years after the campaigns in which he had fought by her side, bore testimony to the commanding power of her words. She said one day to the king, in the hearing of Dunois : " When I am annoyed because my message from God is not more regarded, I go apart and pray to God ; I lay my com- plaint before Him ; and when my prayer is finished I hear a Voice which cries to me, ' Child of God, go, go ; I will be your helper ; go ! ' And when I hear that Voice I am glad exceedingly, and I wish to hear it always." After repeating these sentences of the Maid, old Dunois would add, " And what was more wondrous still, while she uttered these words her eyes were raised to heaven in a marvelous transport." This Maid, I repeat, is inex- plicable, unless we think of her as one of those gifted persons who have natural power to sway and to impress. She spoke to the king of a Voice that cheered and guided her. Usually she used the plural, mes voix. These Voices play the decisive part both in her life and death, and they furnish also the chief difficulty of her history. Most of us moderns have ceased to be able to believe in audible or visible supernatural guidance such as she claimed to enjoy, and we at once suspect imposture in the person who pretends to it. She shall tell her own story, and the reader must judge it according to the light
